Russian state oil firm Rosneft wants to become the first Russian firm to join the list of shippers via a new pipeline from Kazakhstan to China, a Russian official said on Tuesday.
Transneft's Vice President Sergei Yevlakhov said Rosneft had applied to ship up to 1.2 million tonnes a year via the 10 million tonne (200,000 bpd) link, which will be built in December and begin full operations in May 2006.
"We have already received an application from Rosneft," Yevlakhov told an oil conference in London. "And LUKOIL has talked about it. But as for actual volumes, we would need to receive applications."
"We will be running our model and seeing if the economics work and then move on," he added.
Rosneft has become Russia's key crude supplier to China by rail after it bought the main unit of the stricken oil firm YUKOS at a forced state auction last year, which was held to recover back taxes from YUKOS.
But the state firm still lacks refining capacity and is actively using all possible means to export more crude.
The Kazakhstan-China link, which is set to double the initial capacity to 20 million tonnes later this decade, is a boon for land-locked Kazakhstan which may soon lack oil export outlets because output is rising fast.
Russia and Kazakhstan are already connected by an extensive pipeline network and discussions have been going for some time between the two states about whether Russia can join the link if Kazakhstan fails to fully fill it at the first stage.
Yevlakhov also said Transneft had indefinitely abandoned its plans to build a 500,000 bpd link from northern oilfields to a terminal on the Barents Sea as slower production growth in the past year did not justify huge investments.
Production growth has slowed to a mere 2 percent in past months after surging in the last few years and Transneft claims its capacity in pipes to traditional destinations in Europe is still under-used.
LUKOIL, the only firm which is forecasting a major spike in output in Russia's north, has already decided to go ahead with an alternative plan and to build a 240,000-bpd export terminal in the Barents Sea port of Varandei, together with its US partner ConocoPhillips.
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